Like the misfit team Bliss Cavendar joins in “Whip It,” Drew Barrymore’s roller derby flick has tremendous heart and a feisty spirit.Ellen Page plays 17-year-old Bliss in Barrymore’s welcome and winning directorial debut. Bliss and younger sister Shania are pageant contestants in a state — Texas — that loves its pageants.
Bliss’ mom, Brooke (Marcia Gay Harden), has her oldest daughter’s goal set when the movie opens: Win the Miss Bluebonnet crown.
When Bliss spies a group of derby skaters, her ambitions veer. Bliss follows her, well, bliss, which doesn’t mean she won’t make mistakes.
The movie’s message is articulated succinctly. When the star-struck teen approaches a group of derby skaters, one named Maggie Mayhem (Kristen Wiig) tells her, “Put your own skates on. Be your own hero.”
Soon Bliss is making trips to nearby Austin from semi-rural Bodeen and lying to her parents a bit too much for a good kid.
Barrymore’s embrace of gal power is joyful. The skaters are gutsy, goofy or both. They own their own odd sexiness.
And female friendship is treated as liberating. It also provides sanctuary. Best friends Bliss and Pash waitress at the Oink Joint in Bodeen. They have each other’s backs — and when they don’t, it matters. Alia Shawkat makes us care about Pash’s dreams just as much as those of Bliss.
Shauna Cross adapted her novel for the screen and kept things smart and nuanced. For instance, parents aren’t enemies or soul crushers. They are people who’ve made their own complicated bargains on the way to adulthood.
Harden and Daniel Stern deliver fulsome portraits of imperfectly perfect — i.e., loving — parents.
Plenty of the easy chuckles come from the names the Hurl Scouts and their rivals take for themselves. R&B performer Eve and stuntwoman extraordinaire Zoë Bell play teammates with names a little too good to spoil here. But the monikers were inspired by handles like Janis Choplin, Judy Gloom and Condoleezza Slice.
Barrymore takes a conventional genre — the sports underdog flick — and tweaks it in just the right places. Scenes of Bliss “training” on the streets of Bodeen are as adorable as they are invigorating.
If Hurl Scouts coach Razor’s delivery has hints of Owen Wilson’s slacker cadences, that’s because he’s played by Wilson bro Andrew in one of his funniest turns. A butch softy, Razor takes coaching seriously, even if his girls just want to have fun.
The rink action takes place in a big barn of a place in Austin, the town where roller derby was allegedly reborn in 2000. (Denver has its own league, the Denver Roller Dolls.)
Juliette Lewis is Iron Maven, the reigning queen of the rink. Looking not unlike Steve Tyler of Aerosmith (nearly as cool as it is scary), she’s a meanie nemesis to the league’s new ingenue.
Singer-songwriter Landon Pigg plays rocker Oliver, whom Bliss meets on one of her clandestine trips to Austin. Their courtship is swoony yet believable. It’s also not without bumps and consequence.
“Whip It” is steadfastly wise about how the relationships that shape Bliss — the parents, the best friend, the boyfriend — don’t do the whole job.
She’s still required to put on her skates, enter the fray, take her knocks. And, yes, give a few — in the spirit of good clean fun, of course.
“WHIP IT.”
PG-13 for sexual content, including crude dialogue, language and drug material. 1 hour, 51 minutes. Directed by Drew Barrymore; written by Shauna Cross from her book; photography by Robert Yeoman; starring Ellen Page, Marcia Gay Harden, Kristen Wiig, Drew Barrymore, Juliette Lewis, Jimmy Fallon, Alia Shawkat, Eve, Zoë Bell, Ari Graynor, Eulala Scheel, Andrew Wilson, Carlo Alban, Landon Pigg, Rachel Piplica, Kristen Adolfi and Daniel Stern. Opens today at area theaters.
